Fabrication Day

The weather was gorgeous today, so I decided to take care of some welding tasks.  The first one was to repair the damaged front driver's side frame section.  It was straightforward business and didn't take very long to complete.  The rear transmission cross member, however, took more thinking time.  I already had all of the scrap metal I needed in the garage from a previous project, so it really just came down to figuring it out and getting it done.

Damaged frame section:

 Clamped down and hammered back into place:

 Preheated the frame section with a torch to keep the weld seam from cracking due to rapid cooling:

 Welded up and ground down:

 I cut a 1" section out of the middle of the transmission cross member to make it fit in its new location farther back on the truck frame.

 Fit back up for welding:

 Preheated for good measure:

 Another viewof the bottom face:

 Weld complete on the main seam:

This angled piece of square tubing will be welded to the side of the existing cross member to actually mate with the rear transmission mount.

 Like so:

 I thought it needed some extra bracing, so I made these 1" square tubing pieces.

 The square tubing pieces looked kind of mickey-mouse on there and I thought that they might trap debris and moisture on the mount, so I made a more open gusset thingy to weld on for extra bracing:

 The finished cross member.  I will drill the holes in the square tubing after I double check all of the measurements on the truck frame, transmission, drive shaft, etc.

 View from the bottom: